Results tagged “peterhowell”

Couple of things going on with the films released this week. With Shutter, most interesting is that it’s based on a Thai horror film, but has been, in its Western remake, transplanted to Tokyo. Reasons? Well, either “all of Asia is basically the same thing, right?” or “people always think of scary pale girls with long black hair as being Japanese, anyway.”

If there’s something that all critics know, it’s that it’s great fun to rip apart something that’s incredibly bad. Especially if you know the person who made it deserves it. So as a result there’s a regular bounty of great criticism thrown at Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C. The guy has foisted some of the worst, laziest, most idiotic films on the public ever (his take on Godzilla should have had him tried in the Hague) and just the trailer of 10,000 B.C. seemed like it was intentionally trying to make us stupider.

We managed to see Cloverfield a few weeks ago, and with the release of Diary of the Dead (above) this week, we have to say it's rather timely to discuss our opinion of it. As tired as this quote is, there's really no better way to describe Cloverfield than to take from Macbeth's famous soliloquy: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Hello, and welcome to another installment of everyone’s favourite film column in which the writer makes up their opinions on the weeks films largely based on what trailers they’ve seen on TV.

During TIFF we said, "if you’re as big a fan of Joy Division as Torontoist is, you’ll quickly come to terms with the fact that Control is simply one man’s interpretation of Deborah Curtis’s book Touching from a Distance, and your overall feelings will (probably) lie on how you feel about that interpretation," and we stand by that even now—despite the gorgeous cinematography, which remains the film’s strongest point, we still like 24 Hour Party People better (even though that’s really about Tony Wilson).

Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival (covered by Amanda Buckiewicz earlier this week) is at the Bloor Cinema this Saturday, October 13 at 8 p.m, but if you’re a person of milder tastes (soft liquor and corn?) this week’s festivals of interest include the Toronto Latin Film Festival, the Macedonian Film Festival, the DNA Film Festival (it’s a busy week for festivals!), and the ImagiNATIVE Film Festival, which continues to win us over every year with its brilliant poster designs.

We’ve been looking for a way to talk about King Kong again for a while now. It’s unlikely you’ll remember, but Torontoist’s first Film Friday column was actually published in the week Peter Jackson’s remake hit cinema screens, yet that’s not (specifically) the reason we’ve been in the mood to mention it again.

ARR! Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End hits this week and as the third second sequel to hit this summer it’s got some stiff competition. Nice to see though that they’ve made sure it beats Spider-Man 3 in at least one respect, in that at 2 hours and 47 minutes long, it’s a good half hour longer. It’s nearly as long as Inland Empire (which is finished at the Royal now, so we promise we won’t mention it again) and apparently, almost as confusing. Reviewers have mostly come to the conclusion that they didn’t have a clue what was going on, but we think NOW’s Deirdre Swain put it most eloquently: “It would take the sharpest sword in the armoury to cut through this sailor's knot of a plot; I couldn't explain it if I wanted to.”

Our title this week of course refers to Catch and Release, a film which has been so endlessly trailered on TV (and we don’t even watch that much) that Torontoist feels like we could recite the whole bloody film right now. “The man I was going to marry is dead! I’m sitting wearing my wedding dress and moping – it’s a girl thing! Kevin Smith is fat and talentless, but friends with Ben Affleck so he can be in this! I’ve fallen in love with you now, sexy and stereotypical unshaven male lead! The End!”